


Acquiescence

by rikke_leonhart



Series: Episode Reaction Fics [5]
Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Asmodeus' A+ parenting, M/M, all my malec fics end up with them cuddling??
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-05
Updated: 2019-05-05
Packaged: 2020-02-26 12:26:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18717061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rikke_leonhart/pseuds/rikke_leonhart
Summary: Alec brings Magnus back from Edom.Speculative conversation before the finale airs.





	Acquiescence

**Author's Note:**

> Holy moly it's been a hot minute. I just needed this conversation out before it gets jossed to hell and back with the finale. Oh god, can our boys just finally be happy? Dear Santa, I've been good this year, all I want for Christmas is Magnus and Alec to be happy.

Despite apparently being one of the powerful warlocks, if not the most powerful warlock in existence, Alec had known that bringing Magnus back would take its toll on him.

 

He’d conked out almost the exact moment he’d laid down on the couch, ostensibly just to rest his eyes.

 

Alec can’t take his eyes off of him.

 

The war is not over yet, by the Angel, Alec is tired just from the thought alone, there’s still Jonathan and the utter chaos he can unleash and seems hellbent on doing, but just for now, for this moment in time, he has Magnus here, on this couch, in the apartment they’re going to share for as long as they’re able to.

 

God, even yesterday, it had seemed impossible.

 

With Magnus trapped in Edom, voluntarily exiled for what seemed like forever for the sake of Alicante, Alec had been prepared to go to Edom and wage a  war.

 

This is apparently who he is, stripped down to the bone and stripped of the person who’s always only ever seen _him_. Magnus had taken one look at him, seen past his awkward denial and lack of belief and honesty in himself and apparently decided, _this one_. Without him, Alec doesn’t like who he is. Desperate, bereft, drifting.

 

He knows he can live without Magnus. It doesn’t mean he wants to. It won’t a complete existence and he’ll be broken for the rest of his life, a different kind of broken than he’d felt when Jace had died. He used to believe that the most important bond in his life would forever and always be Jace, but it’s not, not anymore. There’s Magnus, who doesn’t care about the Lightwood name or about Alec’s flaws, and somehow hugs his mom voluntarily…

 

It’s different to having a Parabatai, but it’s no less important.

 

It’s honestly terrifying, the mountains he’d move to be by Magnus’ side. Not that that surprises him, not exactly, and especially not since Magnus would do the same and has proven it over and over, going to Edom to save everyone without even blinking.

 

Magnus, who is royalty in Edom, and who can close rifts and banish greater demons, and who’d sent his own father to eternity in limbo, _Gods_. So much power wielded with such ease and there’s no one in this entire world that Alec trusts more with all of it.

 

“I wish you’d known me before all this,” Magnus says, voice a hoarse ruin of sleep. “I wish… but then, you might not have ever looked twice at me.”

 

“I only ever had to look once,” Alec says, dropping to a crouch beside the couch, and it’s like his hands have their own autonomy, the way they just reach for him, any kind of skin he can get to. It’s Magnus’ neck, the perfect fit of his hand on Magnus’ face.

 

God knows the things Magnus has been through lately. No one person should ever go through all this.

 

Magnus smiles and it’s small but honest. “You say the most wonderful things.”

 

There are no words for all the ways Alec wants him. It’s not just his body, but god, Magnus is everything physical in this life. Alec’s mouth waters, his body longs to _be_ with Magnus, but it’s his brain and his wit and his kindness. His capable hands and his generous heart that despite all the chaos and destruction it’s been through, has weathered it all and is kind in return. Magnus is the most beautiful man on the entire earth.

 

The couch is nowhere near wide enough to fit two grown men, but hell if they aren’t going to make an honest attempt. Magnus is chuckling by the time they find a quasi-comfortable way of fitting together that doesn’t involve rolling off the couch and not elbowing or kneeing each other in uncomfortable and important places, and his fingers card through Alec’s hair like it’s just something they do, like he can’t help it.

 

“I missed you,” Alec says because he can’t not say it when it’s this true. He’s told Magnus everything now. He’s said he can’t live without him, he’s said he loves him, he’s said yes to marrying him. There are no secrets between them now. He’s been without Magnus for too long. He doesn’t intend on letting him go now.

 

Magnus has said he’ll marry him. They’ve put rings on each other. It’s real.

 

Magnus is alive, he’s here in Alec’s arms, breathing.

 

“I missed you, too,” Magnus says as if Alec hadn’t broken his heart in an attempt to make him whole again, to complete him. Magnus says it like there’s no other choice for him, like it’s a natural conclusion to something Alec is saying.

 

He says it’s like there are no other places he’d like to be but here, under Alec’s lanky body, completely dwarfed on his couch.

 

Every time he thinks that Magnus can’t possibly have any idea of how much Alec loves him and how far he’ll go, he thinks of what Magnus has done.

 

This time, he willingly sacrificed his entire earthly existence. The lengths Magnus will go to…

 

It’s terrifying. Magnus will go to the same extremes as Alec will. If that isn’t telling, then he doesn’t know what is. He’d known Magnus would go to war for him, but he hadn’t _known_. Now he knows.

 

He doesn’t feel better.

 

“Never leave me,” he whispers, his voice breaking right in the middle and he doesn’t even care, god, he doesn’t, not a single bit. A year ago he’d have done anything to not sound this desperate, this desolate, this dependent on another human being. He’s been such a fool. Everything he knows about love is what Magnus taught him. He’ll never know anyone even half as reckless, half as self-less, half as self-sacrificing as Magnus, nor anyone with a heart as big.

 

Magnus laughs, but there’s a note of sadness in it, a shade of melancholy Alec fervently wishes he could erase. “You don’t even know,” Magnus says and his grip is tight where he clutches Alec’s head to his chest. “I thought you were leaving _me_.”

 

There’s nothing Alec can do about that but apologize. For the rest of his life if need be. But he’d do it again if it meant Magnus would be complete.

 

“I will spend the rest of my life making it up to you,” he says in lieu of an actual apology which would be redundant because Magnus would know in a heartbeat that Alec would do it again. And again.

 

It’s scary that someone knows you this well, has pointed a flashlight at all your flaws, highlighted them, yet still stays. It’s terrifying to love someone who would move the earth and sky for you. He sees Magnus and sees someone who could command Edom if he wished to, but it turns out that his entire world is Alec. How does one even begin to love enough in return for that?

 

Magnus’ jaw is slack in a way that is telling. He can’t believe it, and god, Alec understands so well it aches in his bones. Alec had thought Magnus would eventually move on, but what a fool he’d been – he hadn’t entirely believed and he’d been such a fool. Magnus _loves_ him.

 

“The sweetest things,” Magnus repeats with a murmur and presses his mouth to the side of Alec’s head; his breath is a harsh exhale and a wonderful reminder of life and presence. “I’ll marry the hell out you, darling, you don’t even know the _half_ of it. I’ll make you so happy.”

 

Alec could _cry_.

 

He couldn’t have dreamed this up, it’s just not possible. This is the man he’ll marry. This is the home they’re building together:

 

A foundation so full of love and emotion they won’t know what to do with all of it. Magnus keeps him safe in his heart, he makes him reckless, wild, uncontrolled. Everything a Shadowhunter is trained to shun, but he has no regrets.

 

Anything less than giving his all is an insult to everything Magnus is. Magnus, who keeps giving and asks for so very little in this world.

 

Alec will give him everything. He’ll never ask, but with the ring Alec put on him, it’s as good as a blood oath, a rune so painful to break he’d rather die.

 

“I’ll make you happy, I swear it,” he vows into Magnus’ sharp collarbones and follows the words with his mouth. He wants to be closer, so much closer. Not sex – he wants, damn it, all of it, the closeness Magnus had taught him to love, to crave and to cherish. He wants it the physical connection of sex with the most stunning man to ever walk this earth, but more than that, he craves proof of existence of this tenuous bond between them. Something tangible, body heat and pulse and heart beat so dear to him he could weep. “I can’t live without you.”

 

He’d try, he really would, if it’d make Magnus happy, but he knows now that it wouldn’t.

 

He wouldn’t be a memento in Magnus’ box, because he’d never make it there. He’d be too dear. Too beloved. Magnus had begged him not to leave, but Alec had went and done it anyway.

 

It shakes him to his very core. Magnus truly loves him, adores him, wants to be with him but wants him safe even more to the point he’d give up his life for eternity, and it means something else to an immortal being than it does to a mortal Shadowhunter. Alec would die, in battle, of age, of a broken heart, but he’d die eventually.

 

Magnus… he’d bear it for eternity. Would wear the scars his love for Alec would carve into him, would probably never open his heart again.

 

Alec had been wrong when he’d assumed Magnus would move on. He would prostrate himself at Magnus’ feet, would bow and kiss the very ground he’d walk on. He feels honored, humbled, petrified, but so loved, so adored, so beloved he feels lit up from within.

 

“Alexander,” Magnus says but it doesn’t sound like a reproach. It sounds exactly like Magnus is finding his footing at the same crooked ground Alec is stepping. He says it like his name is every prayer he’d ever need if he’d found a god worth praying to; he says it like Alec is every salvation, every answer to every question he’s ever asked and will ask. It’s a responsibility he hadn’t known he wanted, but the thought of Magnus with anyone else fills him up with jealousy.

 

Magnus, who both feels like he’s too much and too little, who understands emotions and takes Alec’s trembling hand into his own and says, _this is love_.

 

“Oh, Alexander,” Magnus breathes. “You don’t even _know_.”

 

He knows. Of course he knows. In his arms, Magnus had trembled in Edom, in Asmodeus’ domain, and had bitten out, “I tried to forget you, I wanted to remove you,” and Alec knows it was before Magnus had proposed to him, but it’d made something in vicinity of his heart want to curl up and wither away.

 

Magnus had banished his father; had come to Alec’s rescue and _proposed_ to him. “I love you,” he’d said, like a broken record that had repeated itself so many times yet there’s no end to it. “I couldn’t, of course I couldn’t forget you - ”

 

“It doesn’t matter,” Alec had promised him, there in the heart of Edom, in what _could_ be Magnus’ domain. Were their choices any different, this could be what Magnus ruled. “I’m so sorry, Magnus, don’t, I love you, we’re good – “

 

In the present, Alec says, “marry me,” and tightens his grip impossibly. It’s too good to be true. He’d hoped his proposal would be suave, smooth, romantic.

 

Magnus’ proposal had been desperate, emotional, wrecked. But it’d been happy, tinged with something that had tasted like vindication. Like in spite of everything, they had still found their way back to each other.

 

“Yes, Alexander, of course,” Magnus says and kisses him, inhales sharply through his nose and grips his face so tightly it feels like it’ll bruise.

 

Good. Alec will wear the bruises with pride.

 

They’re getting _married_. This amazing person looked at Alec and never looked away even when he’d tried to. Alec doesn’t know what he did to deserve this, but he does know this: they’ve weathered every storm thrown at them, and they’re still here.

 

There’s still ways to go, battles to fight – a war to end.

 

This moment though… this is just for them.

 


End file.
